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Category Archives: Meditations

As a way to wrap up this annual exercise of spending time with one of the Church Fathers in preparation for the Nativity, I would like to follow up on yesterday’s post with a reminder that St. Gregory isn’t the only one who brings up suffering and death at Christmas time. On December 26th, the day after Christmas, the Orthodox Church reads the story of Herod’s anger and his slaughtering of all the male children two years and younger in the environs of Bethlehem. Three days later, on December 29th, the Orthodox Church officially commemorates these victims with the Feast for the 14,000 Holy Innocents.

It is a reminder that though we are called to leap for joy, sing praises to God and stand in awe of all that will be accomplished by Christ through His Nativity, the world continues to be filled with suffering and death. There are those who are today slaughtered by their fellow man for no good reason what so ever. Every year we have far more than 14,000 innocents who succumb to a death brought about by their fellow human beings.

Thus, in the midst of all this joy and all this celebration — for we Orthodox Christians do not stop celebrating Christmas on the morning of December 25th — we must remember all of those who died before ever knowing Christ. Remember all of those who died before they really ever had a chance to live. Remember all those whose lives that were cut short through the selfishness and cruelty of fallen humanity.

This is our burden and also our hope. During the liturgy, the priest says these seemingly innocuous words:

Remember also, Lord, those whom each of us calls to mind and all your people.

Then, as the priest is placing all of the crumbs that are left from the Body of Christ on the paten into the Cup he prays:

Wash away, Lord, by Your holy Blood, the sins of all those commemorated through the intercessions of the Theotokos and all Your saints. Amen.

By these two prayers, and our active participation in them we have the opportunity to ask God to not only remember but to forgive and grant everything that He gives us, His children, to those whom we bring to mind. Thus, the Church lifts up to God all those babes killed by Herod before they ever had a chance to live life or to know Christ. In turn, she invites us to lift up to God all of the innocents who have been killed throughout the ages.

May God, through our prayers, be as loving and merciful as we dare to hope. Indeed, may He marvelously exceed all of our expectations. Amen.

Section 18 is the last in St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38. Despite the challenges posed by the polemics of Sections 14 & 15, this last part of St. Gregory’s homily on Christmas may very well be the most provocative, especially for those of us who live in the relative luxury of 21st century America. St. Gregory exhorts us to intimately identify ourselves with Christ. That in and of itself isn’t very shocking; however, the kind of intimacy he demands is.

Be stoned? Get interrogated by authorities who might kill us? Seek torture? Taste gall? Seek spittings? Accept beatings? Get crowned with thorns? Get crucified and die? At first glance, St. Gregory sounds as if he wants us all to turn into suicidal masochists.

For those of us who live in societies that are relatively tolerant of Christianity, St. Gregory’s words are metaphor. The proof of this is when he asks us to “be crowned with thorns through the harshness of a life in accord with God.” Though he might be speaking of the ascetical practices of Orthodox Christianity, the sacrifices we must make in our time and treasure for a life in Christ as well as the hardship that accompanies trying to do the right thing, here is a dirty little secret: life is harsh whether you are a practicing Orthodox Christian or not.

We are all doomed to tragedy, decay and death. We will be assaulted by natural disaster, emotional turmoil and disappointment. We will all see the dreams of our youth fade into the harsh realities of adulthood and old age (that is, if we aren’t molested by some disease or accident which makes old age look like a luxury).

Thus, St. Gregory really isn’t asking us to seek trials and tribulations because we are going to have to go through them whether we like it or not. Rather, St. Gregory is asking us to go through all of our pain and suffering with Christ at our side. He does so with this litany of sufferings that Christ went through Himself to demonstrate that Christ is intimately familiar with our suffering. We do not have to go through the harshness of life alone. We do not have to shoulder all of this pain on our own.

Christ tells us His burden is light, because He has the strength to shoulder all of the pain and all of the suffering that humanity has ever, will ever and is going through. If we allow ourselves to identify with the suffering Christ went through for us, we, with Christ not only at our side but within us, can power through even the most horrendous of tribulations. Witness the martyrs.

In the end, all the pain, the suffering and the death that world can throw at us are powerless in the face of of the resurrection. This is our hope, this is our strength, this is our victory and it is all made possible because Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Section 17 of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38 and passages like it are the reason I so adore reading the Fathers of the Church. How can one not leap for joy, as St. Gregory exhorts us to do, after reading these words?

In order to understand the power behind these words, and why I love this passage so much, I need to quote the Anaphora of another of the Three Hierarchs — St. John Chrysostom. This is the prayer that immediately follows the words of institution (Eat…Drink…)

Remembering, therefore, this command of the Savior, and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

Note how the second and glorious coming is referred to in the past tense. This is an acknowledgment by the Orthodox Church that what happens within the liturgy does so outside of time as we experience it. When we utter the words, “Blessed is the Kingdom” we enter into the Eight Day, the day that has no end, the day that exists outside of time where time can only be described as the eternal now.

It is in this context that St. Gregory exhorts us to leap for joy. Note that as he moves through all of the various narrative actions from the story of Christ’s birth that we are called to join in. This joining is not something which we do in remembrance of something that has happened in the past, but rather is something which is occurring right now.

When we gather as the Orthodox Church to celebrate the Nativity, we will be witnesses to the event itself. Christ is perfect God and perfect Man. As such, Christ is both in and outside of time. Thus, everything that he has done for us exists both in and outside of time. While the birth of Christ is an historical event that did happen in the past, it is also an eternal reality that we will partake of as the Orthodox Church.

Thus, we can be awed by the census, revere the birth, honor Bethlehem, bow before the manger, know our master and his crib, run after the star to bring gifts, give glory, sing hymns and witness the angels lift up the gates of heaven right now. Amen.

Section 16 of St. Gregory the Theoogians Oration 38 is evidence that as early as A.D. 380, the church in Constantinople was celebrating Christmas and Epiphany as we do today — on December 25 and January 6. This is why he tells us that we will “shortly” see Jesus in the Jordan.

St. Gregory then goes on to tell in great detail of all of the things that Christ did in His ministry. He finishes this list with a very intriguing statement: “How many celebrations there are for me corresponding to each of the mysteries of Christ!” He is referring here to the whole calendar of the Church. We have feasts for all of the major events in Christ’s life from His conception, to His circumcision, to His presentation at the temple, to His baptism, to His crucifixion and, of course, His resurrection. While we do grossly neglect most of these feasts, St. Gregory also mentions events that do not have specific feasts such as His temptation in the desert, the healing of the sick or the driving out of demons. Despite the lack of feasts, these events are all celebrated throughout the year — a fact we would be aware of if we happened to attend liturgy on days other than Sunday.

The Divine Liturgy is not only for Sunday, even though Sunday is the day par excellence to celebrate because it is the day of resurrection and the 8th day, the day that has no end. If one visits an Orthodox monastery on Mt. Athos, they will find that a Divine Liturgy is served every day. It is during these liturgies that we hear the stories from the Gospel about the healing of the sick, the driving out of the demons and all of these other aspects of Christ’s ministry. It is also when we celebrate these events.

Thus, when St. Gregory says, “How many celebrations there are for me corresponding to each of the mysteries of Christ!” he is referring to the fact that it is proper and right for us to have a celebration and a liturgy every day.

However, the most important thing St. Gregory says in Section 16 is the last thing he says, “they all have one completion, my perfection and refashioning and restoration to the state of the first Adam.” Everything that Christ and His Church do have one singular purpose: our perfection, our return to the communion with God that Adam had prior to the Fall, a shedding of everything the Fall means.

This begs the question: Why aren’t we celebrating this awesome mystery as much as is humanly possible?

After I made the claim that modern secularists and atheists like to brand Christians with the image of the fire and brimstone preacher, one might be tempted to point out that in Section 15 of his Oration 38 St. Gregory the Theologian sounds an awful lot like a fire and brimstone preacher:

Against which is he more angry?…It would have been better for you to be circumcised and possessed by a demon, if I may say something ridiculous, rather than in uncircumcision and good health to be in a state of wickedness and atheism.

This characterization, however, would completely miss the point of what St. Gregory is trying to say. Whereas the fire and brimstone preacher is typically urging morality (stop sinning so you don’t go to hell), St. Gregory really isn’t talking about moral behavior in Section 15.

The point, rather, is about how to answer that most important question: Who is God? and subsequently Who is Christ? St. Gregory mentions demons because they, unlike his Arian opponents, understand that Christ is God.

This section talks about how the Triune God is one in essence and distinct in persons. Father and Son have their own activities (the Father sends forth and the Son is sent), yet both have the power to resurrect. Therefore his point about being a demon possessed Jew (an illustration he calls ridiculous) isn’t about behavior, but understanding.

In order to have a proper relationship with God, and therefore be able to partake of His divine nature (cf 2 Peter 1:4), we must have a proper (aka orthodox) understand of who God is. If I go around insisting that all women are really men and that all men are really women, all of the relationships in my life are going to be dysfunctional. How can it be otherwise with our relationship with God?

To demonstrate this relational understanding, St. Gregory mitigates his own characterization of God as angry by correcting himself: Rather whom must he pardon more? God is a loving God. The relationship, therefore, is about love (who must He pardon) and not anger (who must He condemn).

Ultimately, what do the Arians and the atheists gain from who they insist God is? Nothing. If Christ is a created being (as the Arians insist) we cannot partake of divine nature — we merely partake of creation, something we already do at every meal. Since Christ would have a beginning (as we do), he must also have an end (just as we do). Therefore, both Arians and atheists really have only one hope: death.

In contrast, St. Gregory lives in hope that by partaking of Christ, who is one of the persons of the Triune God, we may all share in God’s eternity and thus overcome death. Morality really doesn’t play a role in this discussion, because we are all hypocrites and sinners. In fact, that is why Christ became a babe born in a cave.

Thus, to mirror St. Gregory’s self-admitted ridiculous statement, it is better to be a sinful hypocrite who has a proper understanding of who God is than an atheist who is unquestionably moral.

Inevitably when reading the Fathers of the Church, we will run into a polemic style like that in Section 14 of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38. To the modern ear, it sounds angry, mean, over the top and even bigoted. However, we must understand that our own politically correct, post-Holocaust context is extremely different than the context that St. Gregory found himself in.

Christianity, despite being adopted by the emperor St. Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century was still on precarious ground. Not only had it suffered persecution under the emperor Julian the Apostate only two decades prior, but St. Gregory’s faith, expressed in the Nicene Creed, was not held by the majority of clergy or the emperor when St. Gregory was preaching this homily. As I stated in my introduction to St. Gregory, despite being bishop, he was forced to serve in a house church because every single church in the city was controlled by Arians. In addition, Judaism not only had had special privileges within the empire, they were a source of persecution against the Church.

In the same way we might be comfortable with the polemic cries of bigotry aimed at those who would persecute Jews or other minorities today, we should not allow our modern ear to allow us to dismiss Oration 38 because St. Gregory’s polemics are entirely appropriate for the context in which they were said.

If we can look past these contextual polemics, what we actually find is a apologetic style that we modern Christians should actually find quite useful. In essence, St. Gregory is challenging his foes (the Arians, in his case) to answer for their rejection of the Christianity preached by St. Gregory. He does so in a wonderful way that is still applicable today: “Do you bring as a charge against God his good deed?”

So often we Christians must defend ourselves from personal attacks by secularists. We are seen as ignorant, non-rational, backwards thinking and un-scientific. The assumption is that only non-rational and ignorant people would be foolish enough to believe in an old-fashioned idea like God. Rarely do they have to answer to St. Gregory’s challenge: Do you accuse God because He loved you so much so as to send you His Only Begotten Son? Do you accuse God because Christ humbled Himself for you? Do we need to dismiss God because Christ loved you enough to go to the Cross and experience death? Does God need to be persecuted because He gave us the gift of the resurrection?

Rather than having to get into an argument over who we are as Christians (an argument we cannot win, because there is no way to prove or disprove faith), we should talk about the real issue: God and His Gospel. At issue isn’t our faith, our intelligence or our ignorance. At issue is the rejection of God and all the good He willingly gives us.

Today’s atheists are used to Christians talking about morality, avoiding punishment and operating from a negative view of who God is. St. Gregory powerfully demonstrates that we shouldn’t operate that way. The Gospel isn’t about morality, hell or punishment, it is about the ultimate expression of love. It is this love that is rejected. It is this love that is attacked. It is with this love that we should be challenging the secular world around us.

In the thirteenth section of his Oration 38, St. Gregory the Theologian makes what might at first seem an outrageous claim: it is more godlike and exalted that God humble Himself by becoming a babe born in a cave than for a God to remain radically different from us.

In order to explain this claim, I am going to mediate for a moment on the concept of leadership. What general is going to be easier to follow into battle? The one who doesn’t eat until all of his men are full, or the one who is never aware of the plight of his men? What boss is easier to work for? The one who knows how to do the lowliest job in the company or the one who simply runs things from the penthouse office?

A leader who not only sympathizes with those who follow, but is willing to suffer with those followers is going to have an easier time asking more of those followers. In turn, those followers are going to be more loyal and ready to follow. Thus, a leader who is willing to be humble and to suffer is not only a better leader, but is a more exulted leader because of the love and loyalty of those who follow.

The fact that the Christ “bears flesh because of my flesh and mingles himself with a rational soul because of my soul” demonstrates how awesome, how great, how godlike God really is. Who else but the Creator of all things, the one who declared His creation to be very good, would do such a magnificent act of love?

I follow Christ, not because I fear for my soul or fear the nothingness that is my rightful inheritance after death or even the fires of hell. I follow Christ because He became a babe, because He so intimately identified with everything that I must suffer through in this life, up to and including death itself. I follow Christ because He did not choose for Himself an easy life or an easy death. Indeed, He chose for Himself one of the most cruel ways to die that humanity has every imaged in its long, dark and evil history.

I follow Christ because He knows what it means to suffer. I follow Christ because He has done it Himself and He did it for me. He knew each and every one of us as He marched to Golgotha. He willing bore the instrument of His own torture and death so that each and every one of us would know that He personally suffered the greatest tragedy in all of history for us. He did it all for me.

For me, there are two very interesting facets to the twelfth section of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38, particularly in our own context of modern secularism.

One of the most iconic depictions of Christianity within secular America is defined by the Scopes trial of 1925 and the popularization of this incident through the play and movie Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. Dramatized is the (false) dichotomy between science and Christianity and the crux of this particular conflict is in the historic reading of the Book of Genesis.

Please note that St. Gregory, in the fourth century no less, feels free to interpret Genesis from a metaphoric perspective. He equates the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with contemplation, the sinful weakness of Adam with his own weakness and the skins used by Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness with the sinful flesh of fallen humanity.

In other words, Christianity historically did not limited itself to an historic reading of Genesis. Indeed, one of only three men in the entire history of the Orthodox Church primarily uses a metaphoric reading of Genesis in a homily on Christmas. Thus, the secular depiction of Christians adhering to a literal, historic reading of Genesis even in the face of a scientific reading of history is intellectually dishonest.

Another iconic depiction of Christianity is embodied in the fire and brimstone preacher who is exhorting his people to cower from the anger and punishment of God. St. Gregory also posits that God punishes; however, note what the punishment is and why:

[Adam] gained a certain advantage from [being banished from the tree of life and paradise]; death is also the cutting off of sin, that evil might not be immortal, so the punishment becomes love for humankind. For thus, I am persuaded, God punishes.

God is not an angry God who punishes with the fires of hell. Rather, He is a loving father who limits the amount of damage we can do to ourselves until such time that he can heal what damage has already been done.

God didn’t create humanity in the same manner that He did the rest of creation. Rather than saying “Let there be…” he took dust and breathed into it. Thus, as St Gregory the Theologian points out in Section 11 of his Oration 38, humanity is both part of the invisible as well as the visible creation. We are both spirit and body. Therefore, we play a unique role in all of creation. This role is explained by St. Peter in the second chapter of his First Universal Letter:

Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (verses 4-5, 9).

The normal role of a priest is to offer sacrifice. We see this in the OT priesthood where the Levites would sacrifice various animals, grains and liquids in order to cleanse those who had, through their own actions, become unclean. We also see this with various pagan religions where various items, animals and even people are sacrificed in order to appease various deities.

Note, however, that the royal priesthood that Peter describes makes spiritual sacrifices. Christ, as High Priest, made a physical sacrifice of Himself once and for all time. Religion — the practice of ritual sacrifice to appease various deities — is over. We are no longer bound to that mode of being.

The sacrifice we are called to make involves that invisible part of our makeup — the breath of God. St. Gregory equates this breath with the image and likeness of God. Therefore it is here that we become the royal priesthood — we endeavor to become like God.

There are two primary ways in which we begin to do this. Firstly, we act as co-creators. God gives us water, wheat, salt, grapes, sugar and yeast. We work these things with our hands to produce bread and wine. We then present them to God — we lift up creation to Him — so that He might re-order and renew creation. In turn, we are allowed to partake of Christ’s Body and Blood.

Secondly, this lifting up of creation allows us to participate in the love of God and it is where we learn how to love as God loves. God so loved the World that He gave us His Only-Begotten Son who became Incarnate, went to the Cross and the Tomb, Resurrected on the Third Day, Ascended into Heaven and is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. All of this He did out of love. We have access to that reality through the Body and Blood. We learn how to love by allowing God to show us how much He loves us.

As is expressed by St. Gregory the Theologian in his Oration 38 Section 10 with the concepts of the “first” and the “second” worlds, Orthodox Christianity understands that creation is both visible and invisible. The visible creation is, of course, the world in which we are a part and interact with on a daily basis. When we speak of the invisible creation, we are primarily speaking about angels, also known as the bodiless powers.

Unlike many of the angels portrayed in popular culture (such as Clarence earning his wings in It’s a Wonderful Life), the Orthodox Church understands angels to be an entirely different order of creation than human beings and none of us are destined to become one of that order. Rather, angels are understood to be (as St. Gregory mentions) “radiances…intelligent spirits, or a kind of immaterial and bodiless fire, or some other nature as close to those just mentioned possible.”

As can be seen by St. Gregory’s reluctance to definitively attribute any kind of characteristic to the angels, the appearance of angels in the experience of the Orthodox Church is manifold in character. Sometimes they appear as men (see Joshua 5:13-14) and sometimes as fantastic beasts with multiple eyes, wings or other strange features (see Gen 3:24; Eze 10:1; and Rev 4:6). This variety can simply be chalked up to the limitations of language to describe the experience of an encounter with one of the bodiless powers.

The word angel literally means “messenger.” This function of the angelic powers is best personified by Gabriel, who, at the Annunciation, gave the message to the Virgin Mary that she was to give birth to the Christ.

The prayers of the Orthodox Church also call out for the protection of the bodiless powers (from the Apolytikion of the Synaxis of the Archangels on Nov. 8):

O Commanders of the Heavenly Host, we the unworthy beseech you, that through your entreaties you will fortify us, guarding us in the shelter of the wings of your ethereal glory, even as we fervently bow before you crying: ‘Deliver us from all danger, as Commanders of the Powers on high!’

This function is best personified by the Archangel Michael who helps defeat the Persians in Daniel Chapter 10, battles the devil for the body of Moses in Jude 1:9, battles Satan and his angels in Revelation 12:7-9 and is revealed as the protector of the people in the end times in Daniel Chapter 12.

One might be tempted to ask (indeed, St. Gregory does rhetorically ask) what any of this has to do with Christmas. We must understand who we are and who we are not in order to fully appreciate the magnitude of what occurred at the Birth of Christ. If, as It’s a Wonderful Life posits, we merely become angels when we die what did Christ accomplish by becoming human? We will be these bodiless things that are still subject to change and still part of fallen creation. In other words, Christ didn’t accomplish anything. If, however, Christ became a human being to renew our humanity and to allow us a path to fulfill the image and likeness according which we were made, then Christ’s Incarnation is truly the most important event in all of history.